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Initial Reflections on the Charlie Hebdo Attack

By now news of the tragic shooting at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris has made it around the world. Since I work in peacebuilding and conflict resolution, it’s been interesting seeing how the narratives about freedom of expression and the role of religion have circulated on social media. As I’ve sifted through the articles and posts I’ve wondered how to honor the lives of those killed, while finding ways to find common ground between Muslim and non-Muslim communities.

One of the first themes I saw percolating around my Facebook and Twitter feeds was one of anti-religion sentiment. I’ve seen commentary that treats this as a referendum on religion generally, and Islam specifically. The problems with this line of thinking are multi-fold. Fundamentally this argument is a non-solution, since religion isn’t going to go away. By extension it discounts the many religious actors who are pro-peace. Finally, this position suffers from attribution error. IS/ISIL/ISIS/Daesh do what they do because they crave power, not because Islam is an inherently violent religion (any more than any other religion or concept of social order, at least). The vast majority of Muslims don’t subscribe to IS’s interpretation of Islam in the same way that the vast majority of Christians don’t subscribe to the Biblical interpretations of the KKK.

The second theme I’ve seen is the importance of freedom of expression. Whether one agrees with Charlie Hebdo’s editorial tastes or not, there’s no place in a liberal society for silencing opinions with violence. But just as we face a big challenge in not allowing this act of violence to be a referendum on Islam and religion generally, we also have an opportunity to expand the space for political satire. In the Middle East there is a flourishing anti-IS brand of satire. Much of it is brilliant, and shows there is a large population in the Muslim world that finds the retrograde politico-theorcratic goals of IS and related extremists to be unacceptable. This is common ground on which the Western and Muslim worlds can both stand in support of liberal social ideals.

The way to honor the lives lost in Paris is to refuse to let the extremists, wherever they are and whatever their affiliation, dictate the terms on which we relate to each other across religious and political divides.

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One thought on “Initial Reflections on the Charlie Hebdo Attack”

Well said! Thanks for the reminder that this is a much bigger issue than religion, or any other way we interact through such institutions. Thus anti-religion rhetoric serves no real purpose in the response to this atrocity except perhaps to make those espousing it feel better.